Teenage Dirtbag – Wheatus

 This whole song hangs on one line from the lyric, 'Man, I feel like mold'. When I heard this blasting out my stereo in 2000 from yet another mix tape, I thought what a great phrase and it sums up being a teenager perfectly. Proper rock guitars and sing along chorus, I think we can all relate to this one even through we'd probably forget all about that side of being young. The words of this are so American, especially referencing bringing a gun to school, but are still very clever and speak directly to their target audience. Leaving the rest of us to be both jealous of their youth and secretly delighted we don't have to live through all that embarrassment again.

How hard was it for any teenage boy to get the attention of the one girl you were helplessly in love with and she just didn't even know you existed. This song came from a real place, that feeling of being an outsider, as always with these silly songs there's usually a dark motive behind them. Reading about the creation of this song it turns out that Wheatus' lead singer, Brendan B. Brown, loved Heavy Metal rock music as a kid, Iron Maiden is refereed to in the chorus. There was a teenage murder in his local town and the culprit happened to be wearing an AC/DC t-shirt when he was caught, i.e. meaning any other kid in town that liked that kind of music must also be a murder. Sit on that angst for a decade and then vent it in a hit song, job done.

(Don't tell anyone but I to like Heavy Metal music.)

Favourite lyric : Man, I feel like mold / It's prom night and I am lonely